‘Wolf at the door’ is this month’s prompts in the Fiction in 50 (words) flash fiction challenge.
I love doing these shorts, but we seem doomed to continue them on our own. You can join in – check out Rebecca Douglass’s page for details. If you add your name to the linky there we can follow your efforts more easily!
Wolf at the Door
The cabin creaked under the weight of snow. The full moon lit up the forest. Shadows crossed the windows, distorted wolf-shapes prowling around.
They were trapped.
She snuggled up to him, seeking solace in his arms.
They… his chest… seemed hairier than she remembered.
The wolf was already inside.
© J M Pett 2019
Technical Update – it’s a WordPress issue
I have solved the problems beleaguering my blog, and all my websites. For the time being, at any rate.
All WordPress users might be interested in this.
The problem is how WordPress stores images
When you look at your image library, you can see a single copy of your images. If you select it to go in a post, you choose what size you want.
It doesn’t take one master image and shrink it for display.
Oh no.
When you load it, it makes copies of ALL the various sizes it can offer (and a few more in some instances.
So, if you load a photograph straight from your phone, camera or iPad, the file will likely be anything from 1 to 4 Mb. The bigger the file, the more options it has to create different sizes. One picture I loaded had something like NINE copies at various sizes sitting in the system.
So my websites, which all run under one hosting package, had filled ALL my available space – over 312 Mb.
Quick fix
The quick fix was to use the hosting package tools to identify the largest files, and delete them. Half an hour fixed it enough for: the upgrades to work, the auto-renewing SSL certificates (which tell visiting computers the sites are safe from viruses) to renew, and for me to add more book covers for the blog.
It really needs another half hour a week to delete all the other redundant files.
It’s a WordPress issue
I thought I was being clever by loading an image and immediately reducing it to a size of the order of 200 kb. No I wasn’t. All the bigger files are still in the system. Interesting, because having done that with my file, I can’t access the larger files to use them. It’s just a bit of WordPress that is poorly designed for ignorant users.
I can sort out my websites to solve this problem, because I host them on a paid for hosting site. I could pay for more storage, but really, that’s not what I need. If you remember I had a problem a couple of weeks ago and the support people fixed it. What they actually did was highlight the file size problem and give me more space. Time had moved on, and the basic package I was on now came with 312 Mb, so they put me on that free.
If you use the free version, wordpress.com, which I do for George’s Guinea Pig World site, you are told how much of your photo allowance you’re using. Watch this – you can’t access it and clean it up yourself. So my loading photos of the boys without shrinking them has really eaten into my allowance recently. The only solution is to delete the images and reload them smaller. Resizing them is unlikely to affect the usage amounts. I must check that, though. Maybe WordPress has a cleaning up mechanism for its own database.
Moral of the story
Only load images at the maximum size you want them.
For me, most of mine will be fine at 640 pixels maximum length or width. Only banners and headers need to be larger, 1280 or 1600 width at the outside. I’ll probably be fine at 1080, which is all the guinea pig pictures need for full width.
And now, back to the delete button.
Nice story, and fantastic detective work with the web page! That’s a nasty bit of a software glitch, if you ask me 🙂
It’s not so much of a glitch but a design fault with programmers who consider webspace is unlimited. One of my pet peeves, and a hidden contributor to climate change.
Liked the story – and who knew about the images? I use a lot and eventually paid for unlimited space. I reckoned it was a small price compared to what I could be spending on other hobbies (eg golf which John has just taken up for the first time since he was in his teens!)
I can see your reasoning, and your photos are the feature of your blog. Golf is a money sink.
Oh, the hairy chest. Love it. Not the chest, the story. I’m having a terrible time changing my blog. It could be much simpler. In my humble opinion. Have a good weekend.
Haha glad you liked the hairy chest 😉
All blogs can be simpler, but you need to think of what you want to say to your readers before redesigning it. I find a lot of them too heavy on design and not enough information at the moment. (all style and no substance)
I love reading your fi50 tales. They are so fun.
Thansk, Patricia!